Five Times Mary Killed Abby & One Time She Didn't
by tinlizzie82
Summary: Mary imagines several creative demises for Marshal's new squeeze. Yes, it's pretty much crack. Rated T for Mary's use of language.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: In case you can't tell, I like Abby about as much as Mary does and when Lizzie feels this way, crack!fic is sure to follow, although I will say that this one will have a meaningful twist to the ending. Enjoy.**

**ONE:**

Mary's brow furrowed in irritation as she heard the saucy clatter of low heels striding across the rooftop. She didn't need to look up from her perusal of the dead body to know that those heels belonged to Abby, Marshal's new squeeze and currently the most festering thorn in Mary's side. Well, the most festering if you discounted the corpse at her feet, who had formerly been the business partner of one of her witnesses.

"Hi guys," Abby called towards them. "I brought you all coffee."

Mary glanced quickly over at Marshal to gauge his reaction to Abby's intrusion, only to find him smiling at the twit with a beatific expression on his face.

"Aw hell, you finally got in her pants last night, didn't you?" she asked him.

"Can't I just be happy to see her?" he asked. "After all, it's chilly and she comes bearing coffee."

"I bring you coffee too," Mary pointed out.

"Yes, but she doesn't expect to be reimbursed."

Mary rolled her eyes and scowled at him.

"And she tips the barista," he told her with a smirk.

Mary just scowled harder, now directing her menacing expression towards Abby. She watched as the younger cop stepped over some exposed ductwork and suddenly an amusing scenario sprang into Mary's head. Mentally she pictured Abby tripping over the low silver obstacle and the moment of imbalance causing her to spill the steaming hot coffee on herself. A slow smile started to spread across Mary's face as she imagined Abby, shocked by the burn of the hot liquid, yelping as she stumbled across the roof towards the low wall at the edge and then tumbling over it with a shrill scream.

"Earth to Mary," Marshal's voice intruded on her little fantasy and she looked up to see both Abby and him looking at her quizzically. "Abby asked you if you wanted any coffee," he told her.

"Oh, absolutely," Mary said as she reached out for a cup, her morning much improved by her little fantasy.

Marshal shook his head in confusion at her change in demeanor. "You seem to suddenly be in a much better mood."

"Coffee in the morning makes me think lovely thoughts," Mary told him with a sly grin.


	2. Chapter 2

"God, I'm so hungry I could eat a horse right now," Mary told Marshal as they pushed through the doors of the Sunshine Building at the end of a long day. "How do a couple of burritos and a big margarita sound to you."

"Not tonight," Marshal replied.

"Aw, come on. We could go to that place around the corner where they serve those jumbo drinks in the glasses that could double as fishbowls. One of those, some extra hot salsa, and a bowl of queso will solve all our problems."

At least Marshal had the good grace to look sheepish as he told her that he had other plans, not that it did much to temper Mary's rising irritation. He was, however, saved from the immediate consequences by Abby's arrival. She strode up to the pair with her usual excess of bounce and smiled widely at them.

"Hey Mary," she said with a perky wave before she turned towards Marshal. "You got out just in time," she told him. "The movie starts at seven-thirty. We'll have just enough time to grab a quick bite on the way to the theater."

"Oh, how nice," Mary said in a seemingly pleasant tone. "What are you seeing?"

Marshal gave her a worried sideways glance, easily able to read the edge in her voice. Abby, however, was oblivious to any dangerous undertones and answered cheerfully, "_Water for Elephants_, I've been wanting to see it since it came out."

"A chick flick, Marshal? Really? You're giving up the best burritos in town and twenty-four ounces of sweet, icy alcohol for a chick flick?" Then she leaned towards him. "I guess she's really got you by the short and curlys now," she muttered under her breath.

"Not at all," he replied indignantly. "I want to see it and I'll have you know I've read the book too."

"Of course you have," Mary said with an expression of disgust. "Dweeb."

Abby, who had been watching the two of them, finally chimed in, "I know he'd rather see _Source Code_ or something like that, but we did a _Star Wars_ marathon last weekend and he was nice enough to let me pick tonight and even promised me all the popcorn I can eat." Then she gave Marshal's arm a possessive squeeze.

Mary was about to indulge herself in another acerbic comment involving dogs, very short leashes, and certain portions of the male anatomy, but the mention of popcorn tweaked something deep in her brain and slowly a rather comforting image began to take shape. The corners of her mouth quirked upwards as she gave free rein to her imagination, the scenario playing out in her head like her own private and particularly satisfying movie reel ...

_Marshal and Abby are waiting in line at the theatre concession stand, Abby giggling as she inspects the candy selection. As the line moves forward, they end up standing right next to the popcorn machine. While Marshal steps up to place their order, Abby leans in towards the machine, watching the fluffy white kernels spill out of the popper. Something about her evil presence causes the machine to malfunction, popcorn surging from the heated oil faster and faster until the entire contraption suddenly explodes. Abby falls to the ground in a blistering hail of unpopped kernels, lethal as buckshot. All that Marshal and the other patrons can do is gather around to stare in horror as she lays motionless in a spreading pool of movie theatre butter, her face speckled with bits of salty, white shrapnel that are the remains of the impromptu bomb's contents ..._

Mary was brought back to the present by the feel of Abby's hand on her arm. "You know you're welcome to come with us," the other woman told her.

Mary could see Marshal shaking his head back and forth behind Abby, trying to warn her off, so she pretended to actually consider the invitation. "Hmm, a movie about a circus, or," she paused for effect, "a giant margarita with my name on it." Then she snorted and rolled her eyes. "I think I'll pass, but you kids have fun. Oh, and Abby, make sure you take a good, long look at the popcorn. You can't be too careful about making sure it's fresh."

Then she turned and headed for her car, leaving Abby looking at Marshal in confusion as she tried to figure out the significance of Mary's last, cryptic comment. For once as clueless as his girlfriend, Marshal just gave a worried shrug as he watched Mary walk away, an evil chuckle echoing behind her.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: So i apologize for it taking me so long to get this next chapter up, but I got very busy with RL, and as you will see, it is much longer. And, BTW, I don't know what is up with that, I planned on no more than 1000 words per chappie and this went totally off the reservation. Anyway, not as funny a death but I think the lead in makes up for that and the next one is a doozy. Enjoy, and remember reviews=chocolate. Don't need it but it's damn hard to resist.**

Mary rested a beer in her lap as she reclined in one of Stan's lawn chairs tucked into the corner of his patio. Moisture collected on the icy bottle and ran down to dampen her shorts. A napkin would come in handy but she had no desire to get up from her resting place. Sure, the slow trickle of liquid was annoying, but compared to the group of marshals and staff milling around in his yard it was a small price to pay for her little corner of solitude, so she wiped it against her shirt and went back to watching Marshal and his twit of a girlfriend.

In all actuality, Mary had no desire to be here, but Stan had declared that attendance at what was billed as an office barbeque was compulsory. Team building, he called it, even though spouses and significant others were invited. Mary had tried to weasel her way out, teamwork with anyone other than Marshall not playing a large role on her agenda, but Stan was too clever for her. After listening to her bitch and moan he made a deal. If she could name every member of their staff at the Sunshine building he would let her skip the get together.

"Including the secretaries and janitors?" Mary had asked as she stalled for time.

"Office assistants, Mary, we don't call them secretaries anymore -"

"Jeez Stan, since when have I paid any attention to that PC shit?"

"Whenever you want to use it to heckle a witness," Marshall chimed in before getting up from his desk and coming over to watch Mary squirm.

"Well, duh," she said with a defiant toss of her head, "that's different."

"As I was saying," Stan interrupted, "I expect the assistants' names but I'll give you a pass on the janitors. I'm not sure even I know who they are."

"Mitch and George," Marshall said in a matter of fact tone. "What?" he protested when both Mary and Stan rolled their eyes at him, "I'm a friendly person."

"Brownnoser," Mary muttered under her breath. "You do realize I used to beat up guys like you in grade school." Then she turned back to Stan. "So, when do I have to do this feat."

"Now."

"Now? As in right this minute? Because, you know, I have all this paperwork, and uh, it's nearly lunchtime, and my crazy witness, Marjorie, called again because she's hearing noises in the night and I promised to make it out to her house today ..."

"Yes, now," Stan reiterated before cutting his eyes towards Marshall and then down at Mary's hand which had been creeping towards her computer keyboard as she protested loudly.

Marshall got the message and his own hand flashed out to grab Mary by the wrist.

"Ow!" she protested.

"Don't even think about pulling up the office directory," Stan told her. "Now go. I haven't got all day."

Then he stood there with his hands on his hips as Mary managed to name less than a quarter of the employees before running completely out of steam.

"That's what I thought," Stan said to her as he headed back towards his office.

"No wait. I'm not done yet. There's that woman with the hair like a Brillo pad that works down in records," she called after him.

"Violet," Marshall supplied.

"I'll expect you at my house on Friday," Stan told her.

"And the doofus with the highwater pants who does our IT stuff," Mary managed in a futile attempt to change his mind.

"Martin, likes to be called Marty," Marshall told her.

"I don't think you're helping, jackass," Mary snarled at him.

"Seven o'clock sharp," Stan concluded before he closed his office door to shut out Mary's vocal and continued protests.

Despite her continued efforts, come Friday, Mary ended up hiding in a corner nursing her sweating beer while bad eighties music thumped in the background and the smell of burning hot dogs wafted towards her. She was even denied the luxury of hanging out with Marshall and peppering him with snarky comments about their coworkers because of the Texas cheerleader nightmare dangling from his arm. Her nemesis looked disgustingly young in snug white shorts and a striped nautical tee, her hair pulled back in the same sort of bouncy ponytail Mary was sure she had worn back when she was tossing pom-poms and turning cartwheels at her alma mater. Thoroughly disgruntled, Mary narrowed her eyes and sent evil thoughts in the direction of her partner and his girlfriend.

Marshall must have sensed her intense gaze. He gave Abby a pat on the shoulder and then left her in the company of several women, including one that Mary was almost sure was Violet of the Brillo hair, and made his way over to where his partner was sulking in the corner.

"Here in body but not in spirit?" he asked when he reached her side. "You do realize that what Stan had in mind involved a bit more mingling."

"I don't mingle. And the only spirits I want anything to do with come in a nice cold bottle," she said, holding up her beer in demonstration."Besides, I thought I'd have you available for entertainment but you went and brought Priscilla over there."

Marshal gave her a confused look.

"I can't help it, she makes me think of the twit from Naked Gun," Mary explained.

Sensing that her irritation was not all for show, Marshall decided to just let that remark slide. "You could have brought someone yourself," he pointed out instead.

"Somehow I don't think Stan would have been too pleased if I had stopped in at a local watering hole to grab myself an escort."

"To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, sarcasm is the refuge of a shallow mind."

"Who said anything about sarcasm. I was being serious."

Marshall rolled his eyes at her unwitting completion of the actual quote, knowing that her glib outrageousness was just a smokescreen thrown up to cover her real feelings. Feelings that were distinctly less than kind and currently directed towards Abby.

Feelings that Abby was entirely oblivious to as she wandered over to join them. Smiling broadly, Abby grabbed a plastic deck chair from a nearby stack, shaking it lightly to dislodge the accumulated dust and debris from the seat, and placed it next to Mary, sitting down gingerly on its edge.

"How come you're over here all by yourself, don't you know there's a party going on?" she asked Mary brightly.

Mary opened her mouth to deliver a scathing remark but it never got past her lips. Before she could speak, Abby brushed absently at a tickle on her bare thigh. When her hand came into contact with the source of the sensation, she glanced down briefly before leaping to her feet with a shrill screech and spilling her drink right down the front of her clothes.

"What's the matter?" Marshall asked as he jumped to her aid. He was unable to help her though because she continued to dance around frantically, batting at her lower half and seemingly oblivious to the cold punch soaking her shirt.

"A spider ... a big hairy one," she managed to squeak out, finally ceasing her wild gyrations but still glancing around warily for the offending arachnid. "You know, I'm allergic to bees,"

"Which has exactly what to do with spiders?" Mary asked her.

"Bees, spiders ... doesn't make any difference. They're all bugs and they give me the willies," she said.

"Technically, if by bugs you mean members of the family Insecta, then spiders aren't the same thing at all ... but you didn't want to know that," Marshall concluded hastily when Abby glared at him, for once unamused by his penchant for trivia.

"They're little, they have lots of legs, and they might bite me."

"I guess you could say that sums them up," he agreed, doing his best to ignore the nearly silent mirth that was, by now, threatening to explode out of Mary. "Maybe you should go find a bathroom and clean up a little?" he suggested in the hope of getting her out of Mary's range.

Abby seemed to finally notice the state of her clothes. "Oh god, you're right, if I don't rinse this soon it's going to stain."

While Abby hurried off to find a sink, he glared down at his partner who was now chuckling uncontrollably. "What?" he asked. "She doesn't like bugs. She's entitled to a minor phobia."

"Dear sweet Jesus, Marshall, what are you doing with her. She squeals like a girl."

"Perhaps because she is a girl."

"My point exactly."

"Who would you like me to date? Stan?"

Mary snorted. "Remember the mambo? I know I do." She gave a theatrical shiver, "I'm still having nightmares."

"Very funny," Marshall said, rolling his eyes. "I should go see how she's doing."

Mary curled her lip in disgust as she leaned out of her chair to yell after him. "She said willies, Marshall. Who the hell says willies. Jesus."

She sank back in her chair still shaking her head. With nothing else to do and her irritation still simmering she indulged herself in what had become a favorite pastime - engineering Abby's imaginary demise ...

_Abby tools along the open road in her cherry red, nineteen eighty four, VW Rabbit _(restoring a Mustang is one thing but who the hell restores a Rabbit, for fuck's sake), _her hair blowing in the breeze from the open window when suddenly she feels a tickle against her neck. Assuming it is a stray strand from her bouncy locks, she brushes at it absently, only to dislodge a small buzzing organism._

_With a high pitched squeal, she flinches away from the bee that has invaded her car, yelping even louder when she sees that it is a large furry specimen. Her car swerves back and forth as she attempts to wave the insect out an open window, never realizing that it is a stingless male carpenter bee, docile and slow._

_Then, just as she is approaching a curve around a deep ravine, the bee's haphazard flight ends in a tangle of her hair. With a horrified screech, she attempts to remove the creature, only to succeed in crushing it against her scalp with a disgusting crunch. It is the last straw and she succumbs to the panic, clawing at her hair with both hands as her car spirals off the road and sails out into thin air ..._

"Mary ... Mary," Stan barks at her to get her attention.

"Huh, what?" She answers, shaking her head to dispel the remnants of her fantasy, a slight smile still on her face.

"Do I take that smile to mean that you've decided the party is not as bad as you expected?"

Mary snorted. "Bad music, people I see everyday, weak beer, and hot dogs seasoned with yard dust - my idea of a happening night out. No, I was just thinking about Abby."

"Marshall's Abby?" Stan asked in disbelief. "I thought you hated her."

"Exactly," mary said with another grin.

Stan decided he really didn't want to know.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I thought about changing this chapter to reflect Abby and Marshall's spa date (for which she surely deserves to die), but this particular scene was half written and far too delicious to discard. Oh, well, maybe next chapter. Sorry for the slow updates but I seem to have a particular talent for starting WIPs right before my real life goes bezerk. In fact I am hurriedly posting this before leaving for Nashville so forgive any mistakes. It has not had the proofreading job it and you deserve but I was determined to get it up tonight. As always, enjoy and if you do, please feed my review addiction.**

Mary and Marshall strolled through the crowded midway of the traveling fair that was currently occupying most of one of the local parks. Less than a year ago, they had brought a witness into the program who had worked at just such an establishment in his previous life, and given the nature of carny society, the fair was a significant security risk. When they called him earlier to warn him about the situation, he failed to answer, necessitating a trip to the fair itself.

Marshall looked around with interest in between scanning the booths for either their witness, Billy Bachman, or any of his prior acquaintances. Every so often he glanced down discretely at a sheet of photos of Billy's known associates. Mary was also on the hunt, but in her case, she was barely containing her irritation after her umpteenth collision with a sticky child or inebriated adult.

"Asshole," she muttered after one such collision left her with ketchup smeared on her shirt. "Why do people like these things. First you gorge yourself on food of unknown origin or get drunk on weak beer, then you get on one of the rides and spin yourself sick or lose your shirt playing some ridiculous game that's fixed before you start. How is that fun? I just don't get it."

"I would have though you'd feel right at home here," Marshall said.

"You'd better not be implying I belong in the freak show, because I am armed and will shoot you," she snarled back.

"Well, the thought had crossed my mind but I was referring to the carnys. A whole community of people who divide the world into themselves and the next mark waiting to be taken. It just -"

"So, what? I'm not a freak show but I am a con? Thanks loads, numbnuts," Mary interrupted as she started to show signs of her irritation turning to outright anger.

"You know, you really should let me finish my sentences. I was going to say that a con is the last thing you are, but you have to admit you have a similar world view. The whole _me against the idiots_ thing you specialize in merits the comparison."

"That's not a world view, it's a fact."

"QED." Marshall said.

"What?"

"It's Latin for -"

"Not you, jackass, you know I quit listening whenever you start spouting another language," Mary said as she pointed at a distant booth. "Over there. Please tell me that's our idiot, Billy."

"It does bear a certain resemblance to our wayward witness."

"Good, because I could really enjoy handing out a good ass kicking right now."

"Remember, the powers that be frown on it when you injure the witnesses."

"Can I at least drag him out of here by the scruff of his scraggly neck?"

"I think that might be allowed," Marshall said as they made their way over to the ball-in-the-basket game where the hoodie wearing figure was standing.

In the end, Mary had to contain her aggression. The person they spotted turned out to be just a young local sporting the same sort of meagre goatee as their witness, and despite careful searching they did not find any of his known associates manning the rides or booths. Marshall's gift of a sugar smothered funnel cake did, however, lighten her mood, an improvement that lasted only as long as it took them to get back to their car.

"I think I'll bring Abby back here this weekend," he said as he slid behind the wheel.

"Whatever," Mary muttered, her spirits plummeting at the mention of his odiously perky girlfriend.

"She says she doesn't like thrill rides but I think I can talk her into one."

"Why? Does the thought of her squealing and clinging to you make you feel like an alpha male?"

"No, that's what my gun is for," Marshall said in an effort to lighten the mood. "Besides, I think she'll have fun."

"Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll fall out of the ferris wheel," Mary said under her breath.

Marshall rolled his eyes. "I heard that. Would it be asking to much for you to not actively hate her?"

Mary didn't answer. Her last statement had been all it took to launch her mind into a very gratifying fantasy ...

_Marshall strode though the Midway, a sappy smile on his face and Abby giggling beside him, one of her arms looped through his and the other clutching a plush toy won by Marshall at the shooting gallery game. She tries to drag him toward the Ferris wheel, but he points at the Slingshot ride instead. She looks over at the ride, two pairs of gondolas on either end of a huge, furiously rotating arm, and gives a dramatic shiver._

_Not to be deterred, Marshall, no doubt able to accurately quote accident statistics in his quest to convince her of the ride's safety, coaxes her until she agrees to try it. Finally she consents, clinging even tighter to his arm in a demonstration of what she will need to make it through the experience._

_They slowly make their way to the head of the line and are buckled in side by side but with separate harnesses. As soon as they are secured, Abby again grabs Marshall's arm and lays her head on his shoulder, simpering like a silly, frilly girl. _

At this, Mary's lip curls in disgust, causing Marshall to give her a worried glance, but she never notices, so deeply is she engrossed in her imaginings.

_Finally, the ride begins to move. Slow at first, it gradually picks up speed, causing the gondolas to swing out and twirl around their central axes each time they reach the apex of the ride. The rapid motion generates enough force to pull Abby's arm away from Marshall but she doesn't seem to mind, having given in to the thrill of the motion._

_Then, suddenly, just as their carriage reaches its highest point and begins to whip around, there is an ominous crack and the pin holding Abby's harness breaks in half and she is flung from her seat, looking for all the world like a stone released from the slingshot that gave the ride its name. Her panicked scream tears through the balmy twilight as fairgoers on the ground scatter beneath her, ducking for cover as they try to avoid her impact._

_But thanks to some trick of aerodynamics or acrobatics (because Abby was surely doing her best to fly without wings), she managed to clear all the open spaces and her extended trajectory seemed aimed straight at one of the best stocked games booths. Marshall allowed himself a moment of hope when he saw the huge collection of stuffed prizes. Perhaps all that synthetic fur and cotton batting would serve to cushion her landing._

_It was not to be. She tumbles headfirst into the mass of pastel bears, bunnies and ducks, narrowly missing the game vendor himself, and does not emerge. As soon as his gondola reaches the ground, Marshall tears off his harness and runs over to save her, only to stare in horror at what he finds. Her motionless body has come to rest in the suggestive embrace of a huge, pink, polka-dotted bear that serves as the unattainable first prize in this particular game of skill. Legs spread, skirt rucked up, and the bear's shiny, button nose peeking out over her shoulder, the tableau looks like bestiality as imagined by Walt Disney ..._

"Mary ... Mary!" Marshall shouted at her.

"What?" she asked, still smiling at her graphic mental images.

"I asked you if you could do me a favor and at least try to like Abby a little. Should I take your lack of response as a negative?"

"Huh, no. Abby's fine, I even find her rather amusing at times," she told him with her best approximation of an innocent smile.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Sorry for the long delay but real life is still nuts, I even got this written but then haven't had the energy to edit it and update until now (and I won't vouch for my editing). I do hope to get the last chapter up in a more timely fashion (lord knows I need to wrap up at least some of my WIPS) ... but no promises there. Anyway, to those who have stuck with me, thanks, and to any new readers, enjoy. Remember, reviews feed the writers soul (ok, maybe it's more like feeding the ego but whatever).**

The morning workouts were what Mary missed most.

It was a habit that she and Marshall had fallen into over the years of their partnership. Not every day, sometimes not even every week, but regularly nonetheless, they would meet in the park for a morning run. They'd start with some stretches, go for a run, and then share bitter coffee from a streetside vendor as they caught their breath on a park bench afterwards.

Sometimes they got together during a difficult case, talking it over as they stretched their achilles tendons, leaning side by side against one of the sunwarmed stone walls that bordered the paths. Sometimes it was when everything at Witsec was quiet and they felt the need to trade friendly insults in short gasped bursts as they jogged, keeping their partnership honed with the banter. Sometimes the time was spent in silence broken only by the sound of breath blown out to cool the steaming coffee's burn.

Whatever the reason, they had always been in perfect sync, one or the other of them would simply glance over at the end of a day and say, "Tomorrow?"

Then Abby came along. Now Mary couldn't remember the last time they had met for a run; _she_ had ended all that. _Probably does aerobics with her_, Mary thought to herself. _What sort of self respecting guy does aerobics_, she mentally added, hoping her internal sarcasm would stave off that other emotion that threatened to envelop her in a green tinted haze. Satisfied with her cynicism, she curled her lip. _Bet she uses her old pom-poms._

That was why she was so startled when Marshall finally turned to her late one Tuesday and asked, "You up for a run tomorrow?"

It took Mary a moment to reply but she covered her surprise in the usual way. "What's the matter, you finally get tired of sweating to the Paula Abdul workout?"

"I've been teaching Abigail yoga, if you must know."

"Mm, yeah. You can call it that if you want to."

Marshall rolled his eyes and ignored her comment. "So, are we on?"

"Is Abby coming?"

"Unlike us, she does not have a yearly physical looming just around the corner and therefore has no need to subject herself to a run in the heat of what passes for spring in Albuquerque."

"You make it sound like so much fun, but okay, I'll see you at 6:30," she replied grudgingly as she firmly tamped down the small flare of relief that had blossomed with his request.

* * *

><p>When they met at the park the next morning, the barely risen sun had not yet managed to super heat the air and Mary even found herself breaking out into a few goosebumps as she bent over to stretch her hamstrings. "You know, I forgot how nice it is early in the mornings. Hard to believe we'll be sweating our asses off by nine."<p>

"Radiational cooling."

"That some sort of nuclear powered air conditioning?"

"No, it's what makes the desert cool off so well at night. The heated ground warms the air making it rise rapidly and allowing it to be replaced by cold air from aloft."

"Huh, and here I thought the hot air was just coming from you," Mary tossed back over her shoulder as she started jogging down the path.

"Very funny," Marshall replied, his long strides quickly catching up with her.

Mary gave him an evil grin as he drew alongside and he smiled back in easy companionship, their footfalls settling into a consistent rhythm. By the time they were passing through the open area near the parking lot and about to start their second circuit, the sun had risen high enough to heat the air and Mary could feel the sweat beading on her face and running down between her shoulder blades. She welcomed the result of good, clean exertion, but ran a sweatband covered wrist across her forehead to keep the stinging moisture from dripping into her eyes.

When she looked back up, she saw that the grassy area was finally beginning to be populated now that the day was underway. There were a few early dog walkers throwing balls in the area designated for pets, a couple of boys pitching a baseball back and forth, and a man who was holding some sort of remote control and looking skyward with intense concentration. Mary followed his gaze upward and saw the two foot long model airplane that was the object of his attention. Uninterested in that sort of toy, she dropped her eyes back to ground level and spotted a brightly clad figure contorting herself on a small mat spread out on the grass. Something about the person looked familiar and as they drew closer she realized it was Abby.

"What the hell is she doing here?" she snapped at Marshall, his girlfriend's arrival having ruined the peace of her morning.

"Yoga," he replied mildly.

Mary curled her lip at his avoidance of her obvious meaning. "Wow, and here I thought the only position she would have mastered is 'the beast with two backs.'"

"No, we only do that one together," he snapped back, drawing a disgusted groan from Mary. Then he sighed. "You know, you might like her if you could manage to stop hating her for longer than a minute."

"Nah, not my type. I mean, even if you put her ridiculously naive good cheer aside, look at what she's wearing," Mary said, acutely aware of the difference in their attire. In contrast to Mary's faded UNM shorts and dull white tank top that was permanently stained by some long forgotten salsa, Abby was clad in some sort of loose-fitting, stretchy bright blue pants, topped by an iridescent green skin-tight top. "Who dresses like that? She looks like a bug."

"They're yoga pants," Marshall told her, although he did have to admit that the way Abby was bent over, and the sheen of her shirt, did give her a slightly beetle-like appearance.

"Whatever. She looks like an idiot."

"Give her a break, not everyone can rock a pair of tattered sweat shorts the way you do." His tone was sarcastic but the glance he gave the athletic legs that emerged from those sweats was frankly admiring.

Mary, however, had looked away and missed his longing gaze. "Asshole," she muttered. And then, in an attempt to salvage her earlier good mood, she gave in to an activity that had become a common pastime since Marshall's new relationship became serious. She kept on jogging but her eyes glazed over as she began to imagine Abby's untimely demise ...

_Abby was oblivious to her surroundings as she continued to slowly switch between yoga poses ... the agitated cat slid smoothly into the upchucking anteater as she bent over and extended her arms ..._

Never having had any desire to pursue so peaceful a form of exercise, Mary was unfamiliar with the actual names of the various positions except for the fact that many had to do with animals. Making them up as she went along, however, was half the fun ...

_The former cheerleader was so intent on her workout that she never noticed the noise from the tiny engine of the toy plane soaring above her begin to change. What had been an even mechanical purr rose in pitch, first buzzing like a bumblebee and then, as the plane began to pitch and roll, rising to the shrill whine of an enraged, and enormous, mosquito. _

_Still, Abby kept her focus, never raising her eyes as she contorted herself into a tangled mess of limbs that Mary _(with a secret smile) _decided to call the flatulent lemur. The pose left the former cheerleader's eyes staring at her mat and she failed to see the small plane tip its nose downward and spiral towards the meadow. The closer it got, the more it seemed as if it was being drawn to a particular target, set on its path by some otherworldly guidance system as it drew a bead on Abby's iridescent shoulders._

_It was only when the plane was mere yards above her that she turned her head to see her airborne fate hurtling down. She had no time to move. The elongated nose of the plane, tipped with a slender pointed steel cone, hit her right between the shoulder blades, knocking her down. In fact, so great was its momentum that it slid right through her, pinning her to the ground like a lepidopterist's wet dream impaled in a display case. Or maybe in her final moments Abby had invented a new yoga pose - they could call it the deceased beetle ..._

Mary was still mentally chuckling at her fantasy as she and Marshall followed the jogging path into a grove of trees. Before the leaves blocked her view, Mary took a final look upward at the tiny plane still soaring overhead and smiled.

Marshall followed the direction of her gaze. "I always wanted to try my hand flying one of those things," he told her.

"Who cares about flying one," Mary answered, her grin spreading even wider, "crashing it would be much more fun."


End file.
